


Devil to Dance

by Linden



Series: Pockets [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 01:58:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4647975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time they met their dad at the curb outside of Jack’s flophouse in the grey glow of an early, early morning, duffels over their shoulders and another hunt on the horizon, Sam hadn't spoken to him for four days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This follows immediately after _Shadows on the Sun_ , and the title's been shamelessly hijacked from Flo + The Machine's _Breath of Life_. 
> 
> All feedback, as always, will be welcomed with gifts of a free espresso and a cookie and a performance of my world-famous Look-I-Have-a-Comment Dance.

**August 1999**

It took John nearly a week to get back to New York. 

'Needed to run down a lead in Vermont,' he said, when Dean finally got him on the phone, two nights after he'd sat kissing Sam on their fire escape and one since he'd come to his goddamned senses. 'You boys wait there for me,' and that was all.

The days crawled by, syrup-slow. Dean dropped twenty dollars on Jack's desk every morning for their room, iced his bruised ribs three times a day to keep the swelling down, and tried to ignore the hollow, persistent ache he felt in his chest every time he looked at his little brother.

By the time they met their dad at the curb outside of Jack’s flophouse in the grey glow of an early, early morning, duffels over their shoulders and another hunt on the horizon, Sam hadn't spoken to him for four days.

***

'Five minutes,' John promised, heading into the station to grab them whatever shit sandwiches the place was offering for breakfast, and Dean nodded, set the latch on the gas nozzle, and stepped over the hose to lean wearily against the pump as he waited for the tank to fill. Sam was stretched out across the back seat, nose in a book, bare feet propped against the passenger side door. 

'You readin' anything good?' Dean asked him, quietly, through the open window. He wasn't expecting a response, and Sam didn't disappoint. Dean looked at him for a long moment before he dropped his gaze, unseeing, to the sun-spattered pavement at his feet.

***

He glanced in the rearview mirror as he slid in behind the wheel at a tiny rest stop in Pennsylvania, fresh crappy coffee in hand to replace the old crappy coffee he'd been sucking down since Bethlehem. In the back Sammy was looking at a dead deer across the roadway, his pretty brows scrunched together unhappily. Limned in bright morning light, cinnamon-skinned and tousle-haired, he was awkward and bony and ten times more beautiful than anything Dean knew.

His heart twisted, hard, inside his chest.

He put the car into drive, pulled back out onto the highway. He'd made the right decision, he told himself, fiercely. He had. Because no matter what his little brother's mixed-up, turned-around, turned-on hormones were telling him right now, the kid didn't want this, not really, couldn't possibly, because he was . . . he was _Sam,_ for Chrissakes, Sam who was clever and brave and good to his bones, and who was worth so much more than Dean could ever give him, than Dean could ever be.

Dean had let himself forget that for an evening. He wouldn't, couldn't, again.

***

They’d been fifteen hours on the road when they pulled off for fuel in Indiana, and Dean was about ready to crawl out of his goddamned skin.

Under ordinary circumstances, he wouldn’t have much minded being in the car all day—would barely have noticed being in the car all day, sore ribs and slow drivers and freakin’ construction zones aside. But the air conditioning had gone just on the sunrise side of the Pennsylvania line, and two accidents on 70 had slowed them to a crawl for four hours in Ohio, and by the time they rolled up to Love’s Travel Stop in Richmond, Sam was being such a sulky, sharp-tongued little bitch that Dean was tempted to bloody his mouth for him in the parking lot, half because the kid deserved it and half because Dean didn’t know what else to _do_ , tired and hot and all knotted up with pent-up longing and sorrow and guilt and frustration, wanting a fight or a fuck and not particularly caring which, so long as he had Sam's attention.

‘You boys go in and get us some supper,’ their dad said, as they coasted to a stop in front of the fuel pumps, and Sam had the door open and was out of the car before the wheels had quite finished turning. The _slam_ set Dean’s teeth on edge. ‘Just grab a couple of sodas and something off the roller grill; I want to be on the road again in ten.’ He nodded at the glove box. ‘There should be a twenty in—’

‘I got cash, Dad,’ he said, shortly, climbing out into the muggy dark, and if their dad let him go without asking where he'd gotten it, if their dad had never once in his life asked how Dean had always been able to turn twenty bucks and a nearly maxed-out credit card into weeks' worth of food and shelter and cash and safety—well, Dean wasn't thinking about that today; he just wasn't. Sam was already halfway across the lot, slouching toward the travel mart with his head ducked down, hands tucked deep in the pockets of his ratty jeans. The kid didn’t look up as Dean caught up and fell into step beside him. ‘You wanna take it easy on the car, Banner?’ he said, shortly. ‘We only got the four doors.'

‘Fuck off.’

. . . and Dean was done. Really, he was done. He grabbed his brother by the arm, planted his feet, and yanked him around to face him. ‘Don’t you—’

The neat right elbow he caught across his cheek took him utterly by surprise. 

It shouldn’t have, really, and he knew it: Sam might spend half his life looking like a shy, cuddly little puppy, but he was still, like Dean, bred for violence at his core, and the kid was as tired as he was and twice as pissed off. But in the hot summer dark all that mattered for the moment was that there was blood in Dean’s mouth and a ringing in his ears, and when he looked back around at his little brother, something he couldn’t quite put a name to was welling up inside his chest, a tight hot pressure just behind his breastbone that might have been anger and might have been lust and might have been a black, wicked sort of _glee_ ; and he was dimly aware of their father shouting at them from the pumps just before he tackled the kid to the rough pavement. The resulting brawl was artless and dirty and fierce, earning them an approving holler from three truckers smoking at the curb and a panicked horn from a sedan that damn near ran them over as they rolled, but it was over in a matter of seconds, all the same. Sam was barely two inches off Dean’s height these days, and he was a ruthless little shit with it, but Dean still had four years’ training and a good thirty pounds of muscle on him, and the kid ended on his back, panting, hands pinned to the blacktop beside his head, Dean’s weight across his hips keeping him in place. He twisted, cursing, trying to get the leverage to break free; Dean tightened up his grip on him and felt his brother’s thin body give one hard, reflexive shudder before the kid relaxed, all at once, as sudden as a marionette with its strings cut. Dean was aware, suddenly, of the jackhammer trip of his own heart, loud in his ears, of the heat of Sam’s body, of the negligible space between them. Sam’s eyes were wide and his breath puffing hot-sour across Dean’s skin, and the blood from Dean’s mouth was dripping onto his brother’s lips and chin, and Dean had a heartbeat to realize that both of them were more than half-hard in their jeans before their father had a hand fisted in the back of his tee and was wrenching him to his feet.

‘—the time for _fighting_ ; the hell is wrong with you boys?’ John demanded, looking back and forth between them.

The mad heat was draining out of Dean as quickly as it had come, leaving him cold and shaky and uncertain in its wake. He turned his head just a little to spit, bloody, gaze still on his little brother. Sam was propping himself up on his hands, slowly, eyes wet, jaw tight, anger and misery writ so clear across his face that Dean felt the hurt of it in his own heart.

‘Dean!’ their dad snapped, and Dean looked over at him. _I kissed him,_ he thought, the feel of Sam’s warm skin still burning on his palms. _A week ago I kissed him and I let him crawl into my lap and kiss me back, and then I told him it was a mistake, and he’s never going to forgive me for it, ever._

He steadied his voice, and spoke. ‘Nothing,’ he managed. ‘Nothing, sir. We’re fine.’


	2. Chapter 2

They got cleaned up a little in the empty bathroom, the first aid kit from the glove box in the sink between them.

Neither of them spoke. Dean didn't have much to do besides rinse the blood out of his mouth from where his teeth had caught on the soft inside of his cheek, but Sam's tee was torn to hell, and the kid was shrugging out of it, painfully, road rash showing up red and ugly across his too-bony shoulder blades beneath. There was blood welling up here and there where the rough points of the asphalt had dug deeper into his skin, and bruises that were going to be a perfect match to Dean's fingers were already darkening at his wrists, and Dean could feel guilt knotting up tight and miserable in his chest as he watched him out of the corner of one eye. _Take care of Sammy,_ his father had told him, all his life, _watch out for Sammy, keep an eye on Sammy,_ and Christ on a crutch, had he fucked that up this week.

‘You keep staring at me like that and I will break your nose,’ Sam said, shortly, throwing his shirt into the trash, and Dean felt a stupid, painful tug in his gut at the sight of it. It was one of the kid's favorites, soft and grey and old, with a faded SPACE CAMP stamped across the chest, and now the blacktop (Dean) had torn it past mending. 

‘I—’

‘Shut up.’ He turned on the faucet, started scrubbing his hands. 

Dean said nothing for a moment, then: ‘Sammy, you're not gonna be able to reach, man. Just lemme help, okay?’ he said, and after a short eternity of sharp-edged, mutinous quiet, in which Dean would have been unsurprised to find a wet fist flying at his face, the tension ran out of his little brother’s shoulders, slowly, and his head dropped, just a little, so that his too-long hair was hiding his eyes. He shrugged, wordless, but he didn’t pull away when Dean closed the little distance between them, let him soap up some paper towels and wash the dirt and gravel out of his torn-up skin, smear some antibiotic cream across his upper back when he was done. The scrapes weren't bad enough to really need bandaging; Dean taped them up anyway, with the last of their gauze, not caring that their father would bitch at him later for wasting supplies. 'I'm sorry,' he said, quietly, as he finished, feeling the ache of it in his throat, because it wasn't just the blood and bruises he was apologizing for, and both of them knew it.

'Shut up,' Sam said again, but it was quiet this time, barely a whisper, and weary in a way Dean didn't remember his little brother ever sounding before. 'Just . . .' He did pull away then, keeping his back to Dean, and yanked the clean tee shirt he'd brought in with the med kit on over his head. 'Just shut up.'

'Sammy—'

'It's Sam,' he said, voice thick, and Dean held himself against a flinch. Sam had been throwing that particular comeback at their father for over a year now, but he'd never once thrown it at him, and Dean didn't— 'You don't get to say sorry,' Sam continued, before he could speak. 'You started this, Dean; you _started_ it, and you want it just as much as I do, and now you're too . . . too _chicken-shit_ to . . . ' His breath hitched, hard, and the hands he had fisted at his sides were shaking. He didn't look around.

Dean had been thirteen years old, and tied up in a warg's lair with his father unconscious beside him, the last time he'd felt this helpless. 'Sam—'

'You tell me again that I don't really want this and my oath to God I will fucking end you,' Sam snapped, turning, looking furious and broken at once, cheeks flushed and eyes shining with tears. 'Dean, you . . . I've never wanted anything else, asshole. I don't know _how_ to want anything else, and it's not because you raised me wrong or—or gave me mac and cheese instead of tater tots one night or whatever the hell other _dumbass reasons_ are rattling around in your head right now, okay? It's just because you're . . .' He gestured, frustrated. 'You're _you_ , man, and I—I love you, and I don't—' His voice cracked, like Dean hadn't heard it do for nearly a year, and Sam shook his head, and looked down, and swiped at his eyes with a quick, impatient hand. 'I don't know how to stop,' he whispered, and he sounded—looked—so painfully, painfully young, in his frayed, too-long jeans and too-small tee, with his head ducked and his soft hair in his face and his fingers tangled in the hem of his shirt; and Dean wanted to tuck him up in his arms like a little kid, and also push him back against the sink and kiss him until neither of them could breathe, and all he could manage was, 'Sam.'

His little brother looked up at him, soft-mouthed, wet-eyed. They stood, silent, for a long moment in the harsh yellow light.


	3. Chapter 3

They stopped for the night not long after, on the outskirts of a town on the other side of Indianapolis, where Jefferson kept a cabin open for hunters passing through. It was small, just one room, with a curtain to screen off the toilet and shower, a kitchenette in one corner and a sleeping loft above, but it was familiar and safe and tucked into a clearing at the end of a narrow dirt road that was damn near impossible to find, and so Dean wasn't of much of a mind to complain. He dropped his duffel by the door, went back outside to grab their weapons bag and lock up. By the time he got back inside, John had their camp lanterns set up and his phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, speaking in quick, angry Spanish to God-only-knew-who on the other end, already pulling out a bottle of whiskey from his bag as Sam pulled the sleeper couch out into a bed.

Dean thought about barricading himself in the bathroom for a shower, thought about laying salt lines at the two windows and door, thought about climbing up to the big mattress in the loft and turning in.

He went back out into the muggy dark instead, where there was half a crumpled pack of Marlboros in his baby's glove box, and sat smoking for awhile on the hood, back to the windshield, cigarettes burning down red and sullen, one after another, between his knuckles. The night air was heavy enough that it felt like a blanket against his skin. There was no moon, and the sky overhead was scattered with stars.

***

He woke, some indeterminate time later, to Sam standing by his feet, one hand resting on his ankle. He hadn't meant to sleep.

'You shouldn't smoke,' his little brother said, softly, nothing more than a shadow in the dark—slim-boned, shaggy-haired.

Dean could still smell the tobacco in the air, could taste the thick film of it on his tongue. 'Yeah, well.' His voice was rough with sleep; he cleared his throat, swallowed, knowing he should shift his leg from beneath Sam's hand, knowing he wasn't going to. 'Cigarettes ain't gonna be what kills me, little brother.'

Sam said nothing, just stroked a thumb back and forth along the worn denim of his jeans. Dean was painfully, perfectly aware of the possessiveness in his touch, stayed lying quietly beneath it all the same. A moment later Sammy tightened his grip, just a little, fingers sliding up beneath the ragged hem, and tugged him gently down the length of the hood until he was sitting on the edge, bare feet on the ground, legs spread, Sam standing in the vee of his thighs. He was close enough now that Dean could smell the mint of the cheap toothpaste he'd used, the sandalwood of their stolen soap; could see the soft pillow of his mouth, the shine of his eyes, molasses-dark, in the night. Sitting, Dean had to tilt his head back just a little to hold his brother’s gaze, and he refused to think too much about the molten heat he felt curling in his gut at the thought of it, the idea of Sammy being taller than he was, stronger.

_I love you, and I don't know how to stop._

Long fingers came up to settle on his chest, stroking gently over the soft cotton of his tee, wrapping around the bronze of his amulet, holding on.

 _This is a bad idea, Sammy,_ he wanted to say, and _Dad'll put a bullet in me; you know he will_ and _You want this now, okay, I believe you that you want this now, but you're not gonna want it forever, and I don't know how I'll survive that, when it comes_ , because all of those things were true. But Dean hooked a hand behind his neck and tugged him into a kiss anyway, because no matter how bad an idea it was, or how angry John would be if he ever found out, or how likely it was to send everything between them to shit when Sam eventually came to his senses and realized that he deserved so much more than Dean, he needed his brother’s mouth on his like he needed air, and that was a true thing, too.

It was as good as he remembered, warm and wet and nothing at all like kissing anyone else in the world. Sammy tasted like every cool glass of water he'd ever drunk at the end of a long hot run, felt like every night they'd ever turned into Bobby's drive and found the porch light on and the front door open, felt like a fever breaking, like poison draining from a wound. He didn't remember sliding to his feet, didn't remember putting his hands on his brother to turn him, move him; was aware only of Sam's mouth, sweet and hungry at once, and the long line of his warm body pressed in close. He had his brother crowded back now against the passenger side door, thighs tangled with his, hips pressed in tight, Sam's hands in his hair, fingers sliding up to cup the back of his skull, warm sweet pressure that kept him right where he was, that let Sam lick his way into his mouth as though it were the last thing that would keep him from dying.

His own heartbeat was loud in his ears, and he could feel Sam's, rabbit-quick, against his own chest.

'Please,' Sam murmured, drawing back just a little to breathe, staying close enough that his lips were still brushing Dean's as he spoke, breath puffing hot against his skin. 'Dean please, please, I—I need—' He swallowed, audibly. 'I need—'

Dean tipped their foreheads together. 'You need what?' he asked, as softly, pushing against Sam's groin with one thigh, rocking in, and Sam made the prettiest, filthiest little sound and jerked his hips against him, clumsy and unpracticed and really fucking hot.

'Anything,' he whispered, panting, hands skittering helplessly over Dean's shoulders, his biceps, as though he weren't certain whether he were allowed to touch. 'Jesus, Dean, anything; c'mon, man, you gotta—you. Please, please.'

Dean was gonna give the kid a pass on coherence, just this once. He got his hands between them intending to make short work of Sam's fly, and instead found a line of goddamned _buttons_ , Christ on crutch, one two three four five.

'Have you never heard of a fuckin' zipper,' he muttered, long fingers working one brass button loose after another. Sam snorted out a laugh where he was mouthing at Dean's jaw, and the kid sounded so . . . so _Sam_ -like that Dean had to leave off for a moment to cradle his brother's face in his hands and kiss the life out of him again, just because he could, because Sammy was _here_ , because Dean was pretending that he wasn't gonna leave him someday for something better, even though he knew damn well he would. He fought back the rising tide of grief and guilt inside of him, focused on the warmth of his brother's mouth, the taste of his tongue; focused on the feel of him, slim and strong and—and his, at least for a little while. 'You want me to stop, you tell me,' he managed, and Sam shook his head, frantically, a heartbeat before Dean reached down to pop the last button on his fly and slid a hand inside. The kid was bare beneath, already hard, already wet, Jesus, the head slick and hot and leaking; and Sam stuttered out a helpless little moan and pressed his face into Dean's shoulder as Dean started stroking him, easy and slow, just enough to wrench more of those pretty, muffled sounds out of his chest, get his hands fisting in the back of Dean's tee, his slim hips hitching into Dean's hand. Dean got a tight grip on his hair to tug his head back, wanting to see his face, greedy for every expression that crossed it, hunger and lust and want and wonder. He wasn’t certain that he’d been his little brother’s first kiss, but he was damn sure the kid had never had someone else's hand on him before, and something dark and possessive and hungry inside of him was glad of it, glad to know that no matter who Sam ever tumbled into his bed, Dean would always have been the first one to have had this, the first one to have had _Sam_ , Sammy with his smart mouth and floppy hair and beautiful, restless mind, his dimples and Sammy-smell and miles of warm bare skin, everything Dean loved and wanted in the world.

'So fuckin' pretty, baby,' he murmured, nosing along his cheek, at the long line of his throat, before he let both of his hands slide to grip Sam's hips and went to his knees in the grass.

The desperate, disbelieving sound Sam made at that knocked something loose inside his chest.

He tugged the kid's jeans off his hips, calloused palms rough against the tender skin of his brother's thighs, mouth watering a little at the sight of his pretty cock, every bit as thick and hot and velvet-skinned as it had felt in Dean’s hand. He paused only to nuzzle briefly at the base of it before he licked his way up the fat vein on the underside, wrapped his lips around the head, pressed up with his tongue beneath. Above him he heard Sammy give a shocked, sharp moan, and he got in only one good suck before the kid was coming in his mouth, hard and fast and utterly without warning, on a hot slick mess of salt and sweet. Dean tightened his hands on his brother's bare hips to keep him on his feet, preening a little at the broken, bitten-off sounds Sam was still making, at the way he was shaking, at how ridiculously fast he’d come ( _pretty virgin my virgin my Sammy mine_ ). He swallowed through a haze of arousal, his own cock aching, lust flooding hot and prickly beneath his skin. Thumbs stroking over his brother’s too-sharp hipbones, he nursed him through the aftershocks, wishing he could see the kid’s face in the dark, contenting himself instead with the feel of soft hot skin beneath his hands, the weight and taste of the heavy cock in his mouth.

He licked his brother clean until Sammy was whining a little and tugging weakly at his hair, then got him out of his rucked-down jeans before he tripped over them, and tugged him down into the long soft grass, rolling so that his little brother was on his back beneath him, the scent of crushed green things rising sharp and heady around them. He thought too late of the scrapes across the kid's shoulder blades, but Sam didn't seem to mind, was just squirming a little beneath him ( _fuck, yes_ ) and pawing at his hips with sex-clumsy hands, trying to help him get his jeans and boxers down, uncoordinated as a freakin' baby moose; and Dean could feel his orgasm already building at the base of his spine as he started to rut against him, shocky bursts of pleasure running through his bones, because it was Sam's slim body rocking up to meet him and one of Sam's long legs hooking around his hip, Sam’s hands in his hair and the taste of Sam's semen still sharp in his mouth, and it wasn't all that long before he breathed out a long low curse into the soft skin just beneath his brother's jaw and shuddered out his orgasm hot and wet all over him, making an utter mess of them both as lightning crackled its way through his muscles and veins and marrow. He came back to himself with his face pressed into the sweaty curve of Sam’s neck, and he stayed where he was for a long moment, breathing deep, as he let his heart rate come back down and his muscles remember how to hold him up, and Sam was petting at his head and murmuring something that sounded like _love you Dean, love you, love you so much, love you, love you_ , and Dean would have given anything in the world to believe that it could be true.

He rolled off into the grass beside him, breath still coming quick and hard, jeans and boxers tangled halfway down his thighs, tee still on, the scents of earth and grass and sex and Sam filling the air all around him.

A handful of heartbeats later, he felt his little brother reach for him, hesitantly, felt a long-fingered, calloused hand fold around his own. Dean closed his eyes, and tangled their fingers together, and held on.


End file.
